


all black and full of bones

by sihaya13



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 03:36:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7297873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sihaya13/pseuds/sihaya13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While other girls dreamed of ponies and unicorns, she dreamed of thestrals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all black and full of bones

She had never been scared of the places you were supposed to be scared of.

She lived in the darkness, in the cracks, in the in-betweens, the places others dared not go.

As an eleven year old on her first night at Hogwarts, the noise and the light and the bustle of people at the feast had alarmed her. And then came the fateful words: “Do not, under any circumstances, go into the Forbidden Forest!”

Well, naturally, that was the first thing she did.

She stuffed a few drumsticks in her pockets, and quietly snuck out of the castle, and found her favourite place in the whole world. The darkness and the monsters and all of the things which both kept people out of the forest and enticed them in had no bearing on her.

After all, what is fear?

She had always found fear a very strange emotion. Of course, she felt it on the odd occasion. And yet, it perplexed her. She wove a tapestry of all the things that scared her once. Her father dying, her friends dying, these were the prominent themes. Yet they were pointless fears, because fearing them wouldn’t stop them from happening, this she knew, for otherwise she would not be able to see thestrals.

And so, she learned to live outside and inside her fears all at once. She turned things of fear into things of warmth and light. She never saw the darkness. When her sight was limited by lack of sunlight, or lack of moonlight, she decided that it was because trickster goblins had stolen her sight. They were invisible creatures, so long as you looked at them directly, but if you looked straight ahead for long enough, you might catch a glimpse of one in the corner of your eye.

That night, her first night in the Forbidden Forest, was the first time she saw a thestral. All black and full of bones, it was love at first sight.

While other girls dreamed of ponies and unicorns, she dreamed of thestrals.

She thought they were beautiful. All angles and sinews, they were almost more lizard than horse. They were unusual, like her. Because they signified death, they scared people, but not her. No, she lavished in death, for it held no fears for her. What death meant to her was her mother, and while sometimes this made her sad, mostly she felt loved. Because death was her mother, and her mother was death, and each time she looked into the eyes of a thestral, she saw her mother’s eyes staring back at her.

She spent most of her Hogwarts life in the forest, frolicking with creatures most people in the castle could not see. Those inside the castle saw her quirks and her oddities and made little effort to see past them, just as all people saw when they looked at thestrals was ugliness and death. And so she saw the beauty in them, just as they saw the beauty in her.

Each day, the sun would set, and she would wander the halls and the paths to the forest with a small rucksack over her shoulder containing scraps of meat she had been given by her friends in the kitchen. She would sit on her favourite rock, and watch the thestrals frolic their way through the trees, playing and eating. The young ones would somersault over each other for the food, while the adults watched on in amusement, and she would laugh as all the wonders of the world filled her heart.


End file.
